Kissing Down the Ashes
by Zaedah
Summary: She was dragging his sincerity out of mothballs.


_The miracle of a new episode did not go unnoticed. This is an indirect response to Peter's "I care about you" declaration we've all been pondering. You all know what a fierce shipper Zaedah is...  
_

_Dedicated to all of my virtual Fringe-Friends. Please enjoy!_

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**Kissing Down to Ashes**

He pulls expressions from a box. Embedded tools of a nefarious trade, his career in deceit calls for faces not his own. Summoning the appropriate façade is a craft well-practiced, a mechanism for a grander lie. And his storage method has served him well. The rare genuineness, residing just beyond the thin border his control, is triple-taped, double-wrapped and shoved into the corner of his mind's closet, gathering the dust of the forbidden. A frosted existence lived between dormant cycles of sentiment is the one he's carved, careful strokes of cold lines drawn deep to keep the heart frozen. A safer state he has not known. Such reserve brings ease to the transaction of life and he wears the sun's visage to cover the dark. But faking what others wish to see is simple; they accept the mask as gospel because looking deeper takes effort. He blesses the human race for its lazy vision, making it all too easy to display that which he did not feel for gain.

With the erosion of days, one box became insufficient to house the faces he collects. A secondary storage unit was built by necessity, when deadened interest is sparked by a damaged woman. Despite entering the world in the same year, her naivety seemed to reverse her mental aging process. This was the chase of a child after a perception and he was equal parts dismayed and flattered by her effort. For a man absorbed by the sport of feigning warmth through the false face, he'd needed to launch an opposing campaign for her. Unlike the routine expressions that give a show of warmth where none exists, the new set of faces sought to dim the full brunt of his affection for her. But she wanted authenticity and something in the wake of her almost enthusiastic anguish made him contemplate giving that to her. So he tested the boundaries of his newly excavated capacity to care, exposing an edge of his heart with all the foreknowledge of prophesy that she'd not trod lightly. But ultimately the fullness of what lay within him was a gift that never left his possession. The security of pretense stilled his hand, prohibiting the trust required to bestow truth upon her. Love could not flourish in such barren ground, the hollow of his soul choking her seeds until she tilled the soil to reclaim all that was hers. When she gave up their union for another, he'd piled the boxes of counterfeit faces into a wall.

But this one, an obstinate creature charred by sadness and leaking hope, climbs over the barrier like it's merely a pebble in her path. This one wields experience and astuteness, the sum of her parts mysterious and yet familiar. They both revel in concealment, but time has slowly shifted the latitude of their personal hideouts until the borders touch.

She's pulling expressions from his box. He's not sure how she found her way to the closet, but she's rummaging around with deliberate innocence. Tearing away the layers like a Christmas gift found early. Dragging sincerity out of mothballs. For all of his effort to control the expressions that would give him away, it's not only his face with which he must contend. His traitorous mouth sends a troop of statements that he must swiftly order into retreat. By her hand, unbidden honesty forces its way onto his face. Truth is every bit the parasite he believed it to be and yet the naked skin suits him. She can see it, he knows this. He can cover, but never well. When the liar cannot lie, what is left?

There's only so many infernos that sarcasm can spark and even when his blaze begins to smolder, her eyes shut it down. She doesn't recognize that he's trying to burn the caring out of himself. The struck match is poised over his internal powder keg but the breeze of her smile blows out the flame. And all the while she's sifting through his box, handling his emotions with careworn gloves. Everything she unearths and thrusts into the light is raw in its genuineness and he fears it. Just as he fears the pledge being forged in every incidental brush of her hand.

The work asks for his investment and she asks for his stability. The prospect is daunting because he finds that he must dredge up the mask of disinterest to shield her from the overwhelming warmth he's holding in. The tactic has a dubious success rate at best. Uninvited, this woman skips past the guard, breaks the lock and slides effortlessly into the playground of his mind, stirring his latent streaks of protection and nurturing and a million other things for which he hasn't obtained a sufficient mask. It's difficult to fake emotions when she's sitting calmly among them. Rather, she's drawing them out before his better sense can clamp down on the escapee that is his grin.

She knew the route to invasion because she has boxes too; faces hung over the unpainted surface of true feeling. And in her return of his accidental sentiment, he sees an offer to view her unobstructed emotions. If only he'll empty his boxes, she'd be willing to upend hers as well. Few recourses presented themselves on the day when something fundamental in him finally broke. She had coaxed a tiny crack into a gaping fissure and then recklessly overturned their combined boxes.

And kissing her sent flames high enough to burn his false faces to ashes.


End file.
